


Consent/Console

by slasher48



Series: Post-Trauma. [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Asexual Awareness Week, Demisexual Castiel, Episode: s02e01 In My Time of Dying, Episode: s05e03 Free to Be You and Me, Episode: s06e10 Caged Heat, Episode: s08e17 Goodbye Stranger, Episode: s09e03 I'm No Angel, F/M, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Season/Series 09, Season/Series 09 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-30 18:46:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slasher48/pseuds/slasher48
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel reveals just how much of his sexual history is coerced. Dean reels. Also <a href="http://selfyouscaremeithink.tumblr.com/post/65095399268/9-3-coda-for-ace-awareness-week-because-cas-is">here</a> if you prefer that format.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consent/Console

Castiel ignores him for a few hours, clearly preferring the bare walls and soft bed of the room Dean chose for him to the company of a friend who would throw him out on his newly human ass.

Dean doesn’t blame him, but he  _does_  stick the rest of the burritos in the fridge and wait with his feet up on the table and his nose buried in a book. He sits like this until Cas comes back out, because of  _course_  he eventually does, going for the last easy food he’ll get in a while.

And he does call, “So, how was it, then, besides ‘educational’?” Startles Cas, for once, instead of the other way around, and he can tell that’s what Cas is thinking, as he comes close with something of a scowl on his face and sits down with a beer for himself and another to slide toward Dean.

Castiel shrugs, frowning slightly, uncapping the bottle and drinking for a long moment. “She was a Reaper, Dean. How do you think it was?”

Dean’s brows draw together tight. “Not what you sounded like earlier, I guess. Figured you had a good time, from the picture you painted. Hedonism ain’t always a bad thing.” He pops his open and drinks, too, because the space has to be filled somehow, when Cas doesn’t answer right away.

Castiel rests the mouth of the bottle on his bottom lip, looking thoughtful. “It felt like…a mandate, like what I should do, because she was soft, and kind, and neither of us wanted to be alone. I realize now, of course, this was what the Reaper wanted me to feel—it chose April purposefully.”

Dean shakes his head, lips turned up but not really feeling like smiling as he thinks more into it. What happened was pretty horrible, actually. Shades of Meg and Sam, the early days, or maybe Abaddon all  _too_  recently, the deadliest demon who’s ever wanted  _in_  Dean himself (including Alastair, who’s actually  _been_  there in ways Dean’d give up his good looks to erase from his brain). They joked like they forgot, at first, because Cas acted like he did, but he’s remembering now, and Cas is too.

“Yeah…yeah. I can understand that. You trust too easily, Cas. If it’s not your dick brothers, it’s humans, and I  _told_  you, we  _lie_.” Castiel opens his mouth, probably about to protest in his usual literal manner that she  _wasn’t_  human, actually, but Dean holds up his hand and Cas quiets.

“Should’a gone for Chastity, man. You can never get your first time back, and yours was with something gross in a hot chick’s body, something gross that  _killed_ you.” Dean’s hand curls into a fist and he grunts, “She fuckin’ raped you, Cas. I wanted a better experience than that for you. And I’d kill her twice as hard if she were here right now, for ruining that.”

Castiel glares at him, half-hearted at best, his lips twisting ruefully. “I didn’t feel more than a passing interest in Chastity’s pleasing face, Dean. Even trying to bring her peace only made us both uncomfortable, we could never have…connected like that.”

Dean’s swallow of beer sticks in his throat and he’s gotta gulp twice before it goes down. His mouth has a terrible taste in it now, because, “You were gonna do it anyway? Even if you weren’t into it?”

Cas sighs, slowly setting his beer bottle on his thigh and relaxing into his chair. “It made you happy, Dean. You were…insistent.”

The terrible taste starts to resemble bile and Dean’s heart beats faster, his stomach dropping as his fidgeting foot kicks past the table leg. “What about Meg? Her too?” Come to think of it, every time he knows of Cas moving in on a woman, Dean’s been right there watching.

Castiel looks away, his lips pressed together and eyes downcast, and Dean wonders if he’s missing her. They had some weird…bond thing, he guesses, before she died saving his angel and stabbing Crowley, Dick Demon Extraordinaire. Sam tried to tell him what she said at the end there, once, but what good would that even do? None of them really trusted her, and a hard-on for Cas and a hate-on for Crowley didn’t change that. (It’d been nice, actually, having someone who’d throw themselves in the line of fire and not make him feel guilty, for once, if she died for them.  _Enemy of my enemy_   _can die being my friend_  and all that.)

Finally, Castiel murmurs, “She was kind to me too, at a time like this one, when I very much needed something to count on. And I have felt many things for the demon Meg, but...yes. Dean, you looked at me differently, after I kissed her. Like in the den of iniquity, as though I had passed some unspoken test.”

His eyes flick toward Dean for a moment and he swallows. He does that now, involuntarily, the way humans do. Dean is not used to it yet. “If you remember, that was especially important, then.”

And yeah, Dean remembers, he chokes audibly remembering, but that’s not what this is about. “ _Test_ , Cas? Like what, A plus for tapping some ass? B for getting your hands on somebody’s breasts?” He’d laugh, but this isn’t funny. Castiel was supposed to have  _wanted_  those things, for  _himself_ , as he’d never gotten to before, upstairs, being ordered around by the biggest dicks in the universe.

Castiel finally looks at him again, laughing a bit so that it’s hard for him to actually take a drink of his beer. “I think it was more mouth than anything, but yes, I suppose. Not for any kind of grade but more, for acceptance.” He nods, firmly, “Yes. Your acceptance.” Serious again, more Cas.

Dean can’t breathe, remembering their conversation, Cas’s lack of interest, his  _confusion_  at the idea of wanting more. He reels for a moment, feeling sick, like  _he_ raped Cas: it hurts to even think about it, so of course he has to at least  _try_  for a joke, lighten it up for them both,

“The only sex stuff you ever chose was…for me. Wow, Cas, could’a just gotten me a pie or something. Didn’t have to go  _that_  far, it wasn’t even my birthday.”

Cas looks down, smiling wryly, like he’s laughing at a joke only he knows. “It wasn’t a gift, Dean. It was…proof. Proof I could be human too, that I was capable of some of the things you wanted me to be. Even as I was obviously capable of things you didn’t want.” The smile turns bitter, and it’s in his voice, when he says, louder, “That I was no ‘baby in a trench coat’.”

Dean hates that tone in his voice, it’s  _familiar_ —another human Cas, at the end of the world, hopeless and hapless. He reaches out for Cas automatically, hand landing on his shoulder, and wants to flinch at Castiel’s immediate smile of reassurance when his friend looks up.

“It’s okay, Dean. You weren’t wrong.” He takes a drink and Dean can hear the air he breathes into the bottle as it empties, lets it fill the comfortable, patient pause before Cas continues, “I have much to learn about humanity from your perspective, about living— _surviving_  as a human.”

And then he’s bitter again, and Dean can tell from his own experience that this time the private joke Cas’s laughing at is  _himself_. “I’ve already been sexually overcome after mere  _days_ , and that was just loneliness. Desperation. Far worse awaits me; there are still other dangers  _beyond_  that.” The bitterness isn’t totally gone this time, when he smiles at Dean, but his eyes are very affectionate. “I meant what I said of you and Sam, Dean. You’ll make wonderful teachers, and even if I am no child, I  _am_  a pupil.”

Dean’s body is rushed with cold when he realizes what’s going on here. He can’t help but clutch Castiel’s shoulder in a way that might actually be  _painful_  now he’s human. “Cas, no. C’mon.”

Castiel tilts his head, and  _that_  familiarity is different, warm, something Dean hopes is never lost.  _Don’t ever change_ , he’d said once, and Cas hadn’t listened, but he’s still  _Cas_  in all the ways that matter. “You’d rather not teach me?”

Dean stares at him, tense with determination, trying to make him understand by sheer  _will_.

But Cas doesn’t, can’t even do the freaky mood reader thing he used to, so he doesn’t get how upset Dean is, how torn up he is  _for_  Cas. He makes Dean  _say_  it, as he pulls back and runs an agitated hand through his hair.

“Cas, it’s not  _you_. About the girl, the Reaper, whatever. It’s not  _you_.” Cas needs to understand this, that even if every dipshit and their cousin thinks rape’s on people like Cas (Dean refuses to think of him as a  _victim_ , but that’s the word for it) instead of the assholes like April, it’s  _not_ , and if it’s on Dean to teach him, he’ll do it.

Shame washes over Cas’s face, as he stares intensely at something to the side of Dean’s. “I’m supposed to be…Dean, she  _tricked_ me. I’ve learned  _nothing_ , and it cost me my ‘first sexual experience’ and my  _life_.” His voice is small, and resigned to his own failure. Dean hates it with everything in him.

He’d reach out and hug Cas,  _wants_  to more than he’s maybe wanted anything else ever, but Dean knows what  _he_  would’ve done if some fucker had tried that back when he was in Cas’s shoes; he’d have knocked them right out. So he doesn’t, just says, gruff and angry,

“Cas, everybody from horny tweens to fucking government suits  _trained_  in deception gets tricked into sex. Daily. And they didn’t just become human, they’ve lived their whole lives knowing this stuff. You just trust us easier, cos  _your_ people’re  _worse_.”

Come to think of it, actually, “And, let you in on a little secret, Reapers can distort human perception. One got me with a pretty face too, once.”

Cas glances at Dean, just once. “Did you…was there sex?” He sounds almost  _hopeful_ , and Dean can’t even imagine how humiliating it must have been for him, if Cas can hope  _that_  for Dean himself. If there’s anybody Dean could trust to smite his rapist without a second thought, it’s Cas (if only Sam, and then Crowley, hadn’t taken care of that).

He shakes his head, and Cas’s shoulders slump. “Nah, but that’s not where she was going with it. She was trying to trick me into dying instead.”

Cas’s head falls forward like he can’t hold it up anymore, and Dean wonders what he said  _this_  time, but all he hears is a glum, “I did  _that_  too.”

No, he can’t think about that, Dean can’t do that again. He smirks, weakly. “Yeah, we’re going to have to start keeping a tally for you,” he jokes, because it’s better than acknowledging how his vision tunneled down to destroying April, from the inside out,  _immediately_ , the moment he saw Cas’s eyes close. It’s  _way_  better than admitting that for a second when Cas wouldn’t wake up, he imagined that expression underwater and it was like everything inside him was  _screaming_.

Yeah, much better to chuckle, “You’re like a cat or something, dude. Stab you, drown you, blow you up, you just come right back.” Like it hasn’t been harder every time, like he didn’t freak so bad it was  _Dad_  all over again the last time. There’s been enough deep shit tonight, and Dean doesn’t know if he’s ever going to be ready for  _that_  conversation.

“You know, you  _don’t_  have to.” Dean says suddenly, back on track.

Cas’s head snaps up toward him instantly. “Come back?” he asks, anxious, like Dean’s having told him to leave means he’s allowed to die, unnoticed, not missed by anyone, including him and Sam. Dean has to fight back the automatic response his throat works around, something like  _If you stop coming back I’ll **lose it**_ , but eventually he manages, loudly,

“Have sex.” It’s awkward, the way he says it, but Castiel doesn’t notice, even as his eyebrows rise and his mouth falls open. Weird, really, how much Cas’s face shows now.

“What does that have to do with—” he starts, confused, until Dean cuts him off.

“ _Cas_ , I like you how you are, and if you don’t want women…doesn’t mean you’re not still the best dude I know.” Dean feels what he says down to his bones, and as it usually does, it scares him just a little how deep it goes for Cas.

Cas’s mouth slackens with surprise then; his expression is completely new to Dean, and he’d focus on that, if he weren’t immediately sidetracked by Cas’s stuttering answer,

“D-Dean, you can’t mean that. I’ve done so much, I’ve hurt so many. Everyone, anyone, people I  _love_.” The way he looks at Dean then both eases and increases his fears. But he smiles, and it’s easy, because it’s  _Cas_. Sam was right, he  _is_  one of the good guys.

“Who hasn’t, man? Hell, you ain’t really a Winchester until you fuck up that bad without trying. I said it before, I’ll say it again, you did what you had to, Cas. You did the best you could, trying to  _save_  people, and as for the other shit? I forgive you.”

With those last words, Cas stares down, abruptly, his jaw stiffening as his teeth clench together. It’s such a strange reaction that Dean thinks he might apologize, until Cas says quietly, sincerely,

“…Thank you, Dean.” And Dean gets it, all at once, because Cas sounds the closest to tears he’s heard in five years of friendship. It’s not like he would look up either.

In fact, he kinda finds it hard to keep looking at Cas now, knowing he made him cry. He fidgets, kicking the table leg again, clearing his throat. “Yeah, Cas, don’t worry about it.”

Dean has to look at him eventually, after time passes without a sound for a while. If this were Sammy, he’d get up and hug him, hold him tight, revel in the fact that he’s  _alive_. Give him the same kind of comfort he has since before the kid could talk, back when Dad was gone every night drinking and their life was a long line of babysitters, Dean the only constant he had.

But this isn’t Sam, this is Cas, and Cas has never felt like Sam. Cas has always been  _different_ , from everyone. It feels like a hug’s somehow not enough.

Actually, he feels like…like he used to feel when Lisa would sit up, panting, from a nightmare where something—something  _else_ —got Ben. He’d reach for her, feeling like only he could fix this, like it was just something  _he_  should do. Like he had a responsibility to kiss it better, because words or friendly touches just wouldn’t work this time.

But Dean can’t do that. He’s not ready yet, Cas isn’t ready, and fuck, he doesn’t even know if Cas  _wants_  that now. A mouth is a mouth is a mouth really, and he’s pretty sure Cas wouldn’t give a fuck about him being a dude, but. Cas’s kisses were for  _his_  benefit, or, this time, something even  _worse_ , and he’s not going to push him on that front. He doesn’t ever want Cas to kiss him back as  _proof_  of his humanity, like it’s  _mandatory_. He wants Cas to want it. Bad.

So when Cas looks up and those blue eyes are wet, he doesn’t go with that. He just leans forward in his chair and grounds them both with a solid grip on Cas’s knee. Not moving, even when Cas’s hand tentatively covers his own, letting him know Dean’s there, and nothing’s changed, whether Cas has to go tomorrow or not.

(Cas shouldn’t feel guilty about not being able to stay. Nobody ought to feel that except Dean, actually. Well, Dean and the de-winged dick running his little brother’s show, Zeke the Sneak.

The moment Sam’s kosher again and that manipulative bastard’s gone, Dean’s throwing a damn parade and making Cas all the burritos he could ever want. The guy deserves it if he sticks with Dean through this, and all signs point to that being just what he’s gonna do.

Hell, maybe if they both get there, he’ll try the kiss thing once or twice, too.)

**Author's Note:**

> My rebellion against all the allosexual (heterosexual, most of the time) people not calling Cas's sexuality and his sexual history like it is after 9.3: varying levels of consent issues tied up in Castiel's connection with Dean and/or his survival instinct.
> 
> It takes one (a demi-pansexual) to know one, basically.


End file.
